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Most Common Guesstimate Interview Questions
Pallavi Dhotre
2 years ago
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Process of solving Guesstimate Questions
- Key Points to remember
- Common Guesstimate Interview Questions
1. Last month in Mumbai how many cups of tea were consumed?
2. How many people in India use iPhones?
3. How many refrigerators are sold in a year in India
4. Can you estimate the ratio of the weight of the elephant and the weight of the ant?
5. How many tennis balls can fit in a Car?
6. In the US how many square feet of pizza are eaten each month?
- Summary
Introduction
Are you afraid of sudden guesstimate questions? Want to know the common guesstimate questions and type of answers you could give to the interviewer? If you want to make a career in the consulting industry then it is very important to know about guesstimates. For answering these questions you should be aware of the market size for that area. In this article, we will be discussing the most common guesstimate questions and their answers. To check your decision-making capacity, logical thinking, and problem-solving skills most of the management interviews ask guesstimate questions. The answer to these questions is completely based on your guessing style and estimation skills. How you respond to such types of questions is more important than getting the right answer. Let’s have a deeper look at these common questions.
Process of solving Guesstimate Questions
- Finding proxy: Before answering the question try to understand the type of market and size of the market involved in the given field. Don’t hesitate to ask a few questions for clarification to the interviewer. But remember you can’t ask the questions which are directly going towards the answer. You may ask one-line questions which will result in yes or no only.
- Break down the problem: Make some estimations and you can use pen-paper to solve the problem. Cut down the problem into small parts.
- Do mathematical calculations: based on your estimations of the market size you need to perform some calculations to find out the final answer.
- Solve the parts of the problem separately: Solve each part separately and then try to combine answers of all pieces to get the final answer.
Key Points to remember
- No absolute answers: Guesstimate interview questions don’t have accurate answers. It always has approximate values as an answer.
- don’t look for fractional value: as guesstimate questions don’t need correct answers you should not waste time calculating fractional numbers.
- Note down on paper: whatever calculations you are performing write it on the paper.
- Talk when you write: Always keep talking about what calculations you are doing on the paper.
Common Guesstimate Interview Questions
1. Last month in Mumbai how many cups of tea were consumed?
Read the question first and then divide it into small parts. The population of Mumbai is around 18 crore of which 20% of the population is considered as children and most likely they don’t drink tea. From the remaining population, 10% are non-drinkers, 20% drinks tea occasionally, 20% drinks tea habitually, and the remaining 30% drinks tea regularly. So we can say that habitual drinkers drink tea 3 times a day, regular drinkers drink tea one time a day, and occasional drinkers drink tea once a week.
So we will calculate the cup of tea by days of the week* cup of tea in a day* percentage of the population
Non-drinkers-0
Occasional drinker= 1*1*0.2= 0.2
Habitual drinker=7*3*0.2=4.2
Regular drinker= 7*1*0.3=2.1
Cups per week= 6.5* 1.6cror approx.= 10.4
Cups per month= 10.4*4=41.6crore cups in a month.
2. How many people in India use iPhones?
Most likely children and senior citizens don’t use iPhones in India. So we will exclude this 40% of people. There are approximately a 1.39 billions people in India. If we reduce non-users of iPhone then it remains 834 Million people. Upper-class and upper-middle-class people can afford to buy iPhones. As iPhone prices are higher we will reduce 14% lower-middle-class people from this list. So remaining 717 million people are able to buy iPhone but market statistic shows that 3.2% of people can afford iPhone. Around a 22 million people in India are using iPhones.
3. How many refrigerators are sold in a year in India
Let’s consider the 130 crore population of India and there are approx. 4 members in a family. So there are 32.5 crore families. The population can be divided into poor, middle class, and rich people. Also, they are divided by metro cities, tier II /III cities, and villages. It is assumed that rich people in all cities have refrigerators.
we will see the percentage by category
For metro cities
poor, middle class, rich = 20%, 60%, 20%
For Tier II/III City
poor: middle class: rich = 40%, 50%, 10%
For Village
poor: middle class: rich = 60%, 38%, 2%
To calculate the sold refrigerators we can say there are two types of demands, 1st is totally new, 2nd is replacement after 10 years. So taking these things into consideration you can calculate the total count.
4. Can you estimate the ratio of the weight of the elephant and the weight of the ant?
let’s consider the average weight of elephants as 3600 kilogram and the average weight of ants as 3 miligrams.
we will convert kg to milligrams so we will get elephants’ weight as 3,000,000,000 miligram. So the ratio is 3,600,000,000:3 that is 1200000000: 1 miligram
5. How many tennis balls can fit in a Car?
Find out the volume of a car. Clear two things first are if the car is empty? And 2nd is the model of the car. Then we need to calculate the volume of the tennis ball for that we will consider length as 2inch Calculate the volume by (4 *PI* r^3).
The volume of the ball is 4*3*1^3 = 12
Let’s calculate the volume of the car. Consider the length width and height as 800 inches, 80 inches, and 60 inches respectively.
The volume of the car is- 800*80*60= 1500000 inches
Let’s say the available volume is 500000 excluding the bonnet seat and all car accessories.
Divide the size of the car with the size of the balls. 500000/12 = 41666 tennis balls can fit in a car.
6. In the US how many square feet of pizza are eaten each month?
Let’s consider the population of US 300 million. Let's say 200 million people eat pizza. Considering the average pizza-eating person eats two slices at a time and eats pizza twice a month. That means one person eats four slices a month. If the average size of the pizza is 6 inches, then the slice is 30 inches of pizza. So 4 pizza slices = 120 square inches.
To summarize:
Population 300 million people
People eat pizza 200 million
Pizza size= 30 sq. inches
Average people eat four slices of pizza a month
4 pieces x 30 square inches = 120 square inches considering 1 square foot per person.
200 million square feet a month
Summary
In this article, we discussed guesstimate interview questions and tricks to answer those questions. Guesstimate questions don’t need correct answers they always have approximate answers. These questions are asked in interviews to check your logical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making ability. Though you give the wrong answer it doesn’t matter because your approach to handling the question is taken into consideration at the end. We hope you liked the article. If you have any further queries, feel free to ask in the comment section below.
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